Page 52 of Kiss of Smoke

By the trees, I really didn’t want my final resting place to be deep in the earth, surrounded by people who hated me. No proper dryad should be buried in stone.

The crowd of Unstained Souls continued to step back, making room for us to approach whatever was giving off that awful glow.

My breath caught in my throat as Ioin shoved me forward the last few feet, giving me a full view of it. The light was thick and pearly here, almost solid.

It was a glass coffin on a wooden bier.

The same scratch marks that we’d seen in Carabosse’s house limned the stone floor around it, white streaks with fresh stone dust scattered around them.

But it was what was in the coffin that caught my attention.

The glass case was lined with deep blue velvet, and a woman rested on it, her eyes closed, hands folded neatly over her stomach.

She wasn’t much older than me, looking to be about thirty, but I wasn’t the best at estimating human years. Her skin looked younger, but her long curls were stiff and steel gray.

The soul lamp I’d seen in Carabosse’s kitchen was sitting on top of the coffin, almost directly over the woman’s head. Several phantasmic orbs swirled within it, growing agitated as we approached.

I scowled at the lamp as its pearly light played across the faces of the closest humans. All of them were watching the woman in the coffin avidly.

One of the more agitated orbs swirled faster and faster, leaving streaks of light across my vision, and then plunged downwards.

As I watched, the orb slipped through the bottom of the lamp and into the coffin. It sank into the woman’s forehead, illuminating her skin from within for a moment.

Then the light died out, and suddenly her skin grew smoother, younger. Several wrinkles vanished from the corners of her eyes, and a few spots on the back of her hands disappeared, leaving unblemished skin behind.

Another orb quickly followed, tracing the same trajectory, but this time its light vanished and it was the gray curls that softened, becoming a luxurious deep blonde.

That small change gave me a start. I squinted at her, trying to make out her face while the soul orb’s power flowed into her.

Her lips became lush and pink, her cheeks flushed with life.

I was looking at the girl from the picture in Carabosse’s bedroom. Aurora…who had gone from a thirty-year-old woman to a twenty-year-old in the span of several minutes.

“You reminded me of her at times.”

I almost jumped out of my skin at the sound of her voice. Carabosse stood next to me, and I had no idea when she’d approached. It was like she had appeared out of thin air.

She still wore her glittering shawls and sensible boots, her hair in the same long braid.

Nothing about her changed, and yet everything had.

“You took their souls to replace her life,” I said, watching the second to last orb slip from the lamp. Aurora went from twenty to eighteen, her upturned face beautiful in sleep, still kissed with the last of those freckles from the picture.

Carabosse didn’t confirm or deny. She just placed one of her hands on the top of the coffin, staring down at her daughter yearningly.

"That was why I let you be. You had the same outlook, all sunshine and roses.” Her laugh was short and full of longing. “Meeting you was uncanny. Like seeing her again, but in a new form. Like the balance of the universe had tilted, and had sent you to mock me. But how could I despise someone like you, who reminded me so much of her?”

The old woman finally looked up at me, her eyes searching my face.

“There were even times when my conviction wavered. I would think, perhaps this is a sign that I should let go, and let bygones be bygones. And then I would remember my daughter sleeping in this lonely coffin, and remember my purpose in coming here.”

My lungs tightened, like a giant hand had reached into my chest and was squeezing all the breath from them. “You said…she was comatose. What does that have to do with us?”

Carabosse seemed to shrink before my eyes, her face falling. “Aurora was one of the first humans to enter Avilion when the Unveiled Accords were created.”

Oh, no. I felt a horrible pang of pity for her and her daughter despite what she had done. The Accords had had a rough start, back in the day.

“I begged her not to come. I told her, just stay home, go to school, live your life here. But she was an adult, and I couldn’t stop her.” Carabosse stroked the coffin lovingly. “She wrote to me often. And one day she told me she met a Fae…a Prince Brightkin, no less.”

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